Acanac Internet

Acanac! The worst customer service and internet provider!!!
Haven’t had my internet for 5 days and continue counting… Emailed, texted, called many times and waited over hours on the phone then they cut me off!
Acanac charged my credit card for the whole year without permission, emailed them and no response! Still have 8 months left already paid without using the internet! Hell with them, got Rogers installed the internet right away.
Acacnac is a crook! People should stay away from Acanac!
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To correct my rating!
They don’t deserve to earn 1 star. I had to give 1 star in order to get post it! Should have the negative stars in the rating and I would rate them as –100 stars

Update on my last review… I wish I could give less than one star on this.
I have just finished going through the Better Business Bureau to resolve this issue to no avail. Here is my original complaint of 2.
Acanac stalled the process through the BBB as well. Constantly changing their position.
I have had poor to no service on this account since November 2014. Paid for 1 year of service in March 2014.
On November 27, 2014 I made a change to my service with Acanac to go from a hard wired phone line to a dry loop (service over a phone line without a phone number). Since that time the service has been very poor and constantly dropping. During one of many calls to the technical department, the service technician commented that I had a modem sent to me in May of 2013 and the old one was not returned. Instead of fixing the issue with the service another charge was made to my account in the amount of $ 56.44. This is more than a year and a half after the modem was sent to me to replace a defect. No indication to send back the defective modem was given at that time.
As this unit is occupied by tenants, I have had to disrupt them on 5 occasions to «trouble shoot» with Acanac’s technical support. To this day the service is down and every time I speak with someone they are unsure what the issue is and continue to give me the run around. I cannot go without service any longer and must go to another provider.
I am also having issues with Acanac service at my current address which has been going on since September 2014 and I will be filing a separate claim for this as I will be changing providers.
I also spoke with another tech on Monday, March 11. He informed me that Bell checked the line at (address hidden) and the that the problem is with the modem (that they just charged me for and is no longer under warranty) and that I would be receiving another $ 99.00 charge for the service call.
It is becoming extremely frustrating and every time I try to get the issue solved I simply receive more charges and no solution.
At this point, I do not want an extension to a service that does not work and simply incurs more costs every time I try to have the situation solved.

I can attest that the good times are good with this internet company. Speeds are decent and drop off rates are low plus the price is decent for first yr customers but watch out come renewal time. Their conduct, however, is at best misleading and at worst bordering on fraud. At «their» first year anniversary date (which is probably not the date that you first got service), they will automatically invoice and bill your credit card at their rate which may or may not be acceptable to you as it will dramatically increase the second year. You will not be able to call them to rectify an automatic renewal issue as that is within the exclusive jurisdiction of their «billing department» and they do not talk over the phone. You have to email them and they may or may not respond. Oh yea also watch out for their advertised rate contained in their website. You may or may not get it. (Bait and switch?)

Hello,
For two weeks, I tried to fix my connexion by spending an hour a day with tech support without success.
When I tried to cancel my account, the circus started.
Cant do it by phone… email here, email there… we didnt receive your email, etc…
I am actually still in the cancellation process and now at the point that I will write in every forum about my experience to tell potential customers to run in the other direction.
This company as no respect for their clients and uses policies that should be and probably are illegal.
Thank you and have a great day!

***This is a duplicate review because they’re also posted as simply «Acanac». Probably an attempt at creating a page without the sub-​2 star reviews. And on that note if you read the few 5 star posts on both pages, seems like they were written in very similar style and fashion. Maybe they should put the money they use into hiring a person to write Unilocal reviews into a position that tries to improve their zero star customer service. /​rant***
So, odds are you are here because you’re with one of the big three and trying to find a better ISP. That was me several years ago. I too read all these bad Acanac reviews mostly relative to their service and said screw it, I’m tech enabled enough that I can figure most stuff out on my own and won’t have to rely on them. I said their prices are cheaper than the competition and unlimited bandwidth is sweet, so sure I’ll go for it. Speeds were good, unlimited unthrottled bandwidth was legit. I referred about half a dozen people to Acanac personally. Now I regret signing up and even more so referring people who are going to suffer the same predicament I am currently in.
I had been charged the same amount for my plan on 6 month prepaid renewal terms over and over again. Which is the way it should be because despite what ISPs tell you, the cost of infrastructure continually lowers and there’s no logical reason (beyond greed) to increase prices for the same level of service. Well in checking my credit card recently I noticed that pre-​tax my 6 month charge was a full 28% higher than normal.
So I think wow that’s weird, must be a mistake. When I was on one of the big 3 my plan had disappeared from public offering long before I left but they had kept me on it on grandfathered terms. This is common practice for anything telecom/​cable related. Even the big guys realize how important it is not to alienate existing clients. So I thought surely one of the «small guys» like Acanac must do the same. So I proceed to open a ticket by emailing their billing/​support department.
10 emails later and every single one of their responses being of the utmost annoying kind, clearly outsourced (or maybe they pay Canadians minimum wage?) to people using clear copy and paste answers without giving any respect to my questions or concerns. I got fed up and gave them an ultimatum, at which point all the sudden I get an email with another pasted answer saying «oh sorry we’re too swamped, you need to call for this». Ridiculous. Anyone who knows anything about a customer service/​support environment knows that tickets and emails are by far more efficient than having people call.
So I call and they say yup our prices went up, yup we charged your credit card for 6 months already, no we can’t honour your old prices. They then proceed in retention style fashion to offer me a «deal» on a 12 month plan instead if I was willing to switch. I work out the math, and it’s even higher per month than the rate that I am complaining of being switched to!!! WTF!!! I said no I’m cancelling and they proceeded to process that. Hopefully they don’t mess the cancellation up because I’ve read enough claims of where they did recently.
So I don’t know what to say, it was a good few years when I used these guys and I will admit everything was fine. But if you read through all the complaints about Acanac you’ll realize that at the end of the day, sooner or later you will get burned. Whether it’s by their billing department, shoddy business practices, incompetent customer service, technical support, etc etc, YOU WILL GET BURNED. I’m left with that feeling when you split with a long term partner in a bad way. It’s like, I don’t regret those years but man I surely could have spent them better than I did.
If you read up on their closest non-​big 3 competitor, they address all customer issues and place a high priority of customer satisfaction. At the time they were perhaps 10% more than Acanac (they still are) so I didn’t go with them. I regret that, so I’m writing this in hopes you don’t make the same mistake. Please go with their competitors if you are looking for good service. If you are dead set on finding the cheapest possible rates, I’m looking now and have found them. So just do your research but one way or another PLEASE DO NOT USE THESE GUYS. They will never learn to do better if people such as you and I keep giving them business and filling the spot of all the pissed off customers that have left.

Just appalling communication, lousy service and no ownership of their mistakes. Avoid this company.

Seriously some of the worst customer service I have ever experienced. Not rude… just totally unhelpful. After losing our order for a week, they told us it’d take 12 business days to connect us. When I mentioned that seemed a bit long, they said, «Well, that’s just how it is.» We waited twelve business days, still no internet, and called in to find out, «Your payment was declined, we sent you an email.» (We have no internet in the house., so getting an email is a bit hard– why wouldn’t they just call us?) The reason the payment declined? They tried to put through the entire year’s fee, plus the fee for modem/​router– $ 800– at once on my roommate’s card. Absolutely ridiculous. It’s like they don’t want customers. When we asked if they could do it, uh, monthly like normal, they said yes, but quoted a plan $ 20 more than what we had signed up for. No apologies either. They suck. I was excited to support a small business in my neighborhood, but all of the above has made it impossible.

Acanac has the best price for unlimited cable internet that I found in Toronto. How do they do it? By spending no money on customer service. While the actual service is running, everything is great, but as soon as you need some help… game over. After my service went down, I spent three weeks phoning, emailing and texting and ended up with over 20 open work orders.
The first actual response I received was an email telling me I needed a new modem ($ 96 including delivery). This was possible because I started my service with my own, older modem. Results… no change. The next rep I spoke to told me it would take 3 days for the modem to activate. On the third day called back and the next rep told me it could take 10 «working» days to activate. (apparently their computer doesn’t work on weekends). I even told one rep where I thought the problem might be and he blew it off (it ended up being the right answer).
To boil it all down I was misinformed, lied to and ignored until I cancelled my account. At the 5 week point (2 weeks into waiting for my 10 months of prepaid service to be refunded) Acanac called to offer me a free month if I stayed with them. I had to laugh (4 free weeks for 5 weeks of headaches with no end in sight). 3 ½ months after my service went down I finally received my final refund.
I have never seen worse customer service.

I try to support the «little guy», but in this case, it was impossible from the outset.
Their guy on the phone directed me to apply for installation on-​line — ONLY. (Ummm — perhaps I’m applying for internet service because I don’t actually HAVE internet service???)
And of course, their on-​line application FAILED, and generated an e-​mail — which I picked up a couple of days later in an internet café.
So I called, and the guy finds the application, and processes the credit card — and tells me the process will start when I receive my «welcome e-​mail» in 48 hours. Since a welcome e-​mail didn’t sound like anything useful, I inquired as to when I could actually expect service. He couldn’t tell me. Not at all — not in a week, no promise for two weeks, no commitment at all.
When I asked whether he could «do better», he asked if I’d like to cancel my order. I assumed it was advice, and agreed. They clearly have more problems than they can handle, and can’t handle any more business.

Don’t go with Acanac.
It may look cheap but at the end they will charge you more.
It is very difficult to deal with them. You can’t reach billing department by phone.
It will take ages to get refund.
They will renew the service for next year at different rate without telling you or sending an invoice. You won’t get an invoice even after renewing.
Go to youtube and search for Acanac, you will see how bad their customer service is.

This one was really difficult for me to rate, because when the service has no issues, it’s awesome, BUT when you do have a problem, it can be a huge headache. Having said that I used to have more problems than I do now. What kind of problems you wonder? Well, for the first year I had it, for some reason my internet would become disconnected, and I would have to call in to fix the problem. and back in the day, (and they still may ask this of you) you would call to tell them your problem and if you happen to call during their nonbusiness hours, they would ask you to email them the problem, which is not helpful when you’re already pissed off that your internet doesn’t work.
Now having said that, when I first started up with them about 3 – 4 years ago, things weren’t as set up as they are now. I think I mention this only because they have a long way to go in terms of customer service still. They lack the finesse of ability to offer you anything to help make losing 2 weeks of internet service be more okay.
The last time I had a problem was in 2010, when somehow my internet stopped working, and it was not due to my modem or anything in my house, and directly with the outside connection. The service person is from Bell.
Now back to the bright side. When it does work, it’s great. there is no limits thus far, it’s cheap and when you sign on for a year, its even cheaper. Also when you refer a friend, they offer incentives now, to give the referrer a month free or more.
The way I see it, most internet companies are going to piss you off at some point in time. I’ve just opted for a cheaper frustration.
They are available in Quebec, but I believe it’s major urban areas, but they do ask you to check with them to make sure service is available. They also have higher speeds now too.